


Justifiy What I've Become

by Ephemera_pop (Alex_Draven)



Category: Lamb of God (Band), Pop Music RPF, Popslash, Rock Music RPF
Genre: Bathroom Sex, M/M, Road Trips, Semi-Public Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-06-25
Updated: 2005-06-25
Packaged: 2018-10-16 19:19:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10577826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alex_Draven/pseuds/Ephemera_pop
Summary: He’d overtaken, and been overtaken in return, five times in about two hours, exchanging the universal hand signals for ‘yeah right’ the first couple of times, and grins and waves the last few. The driver was heavy and tattooed with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, The bus windows were blacked out, and the gear trailer they were hauling was plastered with so many band and slogan stickers that, past the fact they were some flavour of metal or punk, Chris couldn’t figure out who they were. Three days – or was that nights - into a long and lonely drive, and that brief connection was enough to persuade him to flick his indicator when they did and follow them off the highway into a truck stop.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://i-amthecosmos.livejournal.com/profile)[**i_amthecosmos**](http://i-amthecosmos.livejournal.com/)’s [2005 Chris Crossover Challenge](http://www.livejournal.com/users/amandazillah/422814.html).  
>  Fiction. Not true. Made up.  
> With many many thanks to [](http://ephemera-pop.livejournal.com/5163.html#)[**turps_33**](http://ephemera-pop.livejournal.com/5163.html#) for cheerleading, and to [](http://nopseud.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://nopseud.livejournal.com/)**nopseud** for making this a far better story than it would have been otherwise.

“So, cat, why _are_ you doing this?”

Chris stared at the phone, wobbling along in its little hands free holster on the RV’s dash board.

Three days in, Chris was absolutely sure that he had no idea at all why he’d every thought that a ten-day solo run across the north west would be a fun idea. He knew that he _had_. passionately, and fervently. It’s just that whatever logic that had sustained that belief seemed to have floated away.

Whatever it had been that he’d imagined the trip would be, while he’d been sprawled flat on his back watching clouds, and pot smoke, pass in front of the heavy moon, the reality was entirely too full of quiet, back pain, really dull scenery and no one to bitch with.

“Because it seemed like a good idea? Actually – wasn’t it your good idea?”

He’d called JC a lot on this trip. A lot “”. JC was an utterly excellent long distance smoking buddy. Chris had spent approximately 74 miles this evening before he’d called JC, working on his theory that JC might be responsible for the sudden decision to pursue personal, private time. It just sounded like such a JC sort of thing.

“Not me man, I swear. I thought you and your hot chicks were ..”

Chris interrupted, with a smile. “You know Becky would kick your ass if she heard you talk about her and Jules like that.”

Good travel companions, yes, but in no way shape or form ‘his’. Admittedly, he no longer had to listen to anyone else having amazing sex in his RV, which was a plus point for the plan. Depressingly, all that really meant was that now no-one was getting any.

“Hey! Man – they’re hot! I know they’re, you know, _them_ but I’m just saying. The first I knew about this you’d already put them on a plane to Portland and you were driving alone. Unless you managed to make some kind of freaky time dilation thing happen where me thinking that it sounded like it might be good for you, help you get over your whole thing about Justin. Like if that went back to the night before and – dude that would be so cool. Telephone messages from the future!”

Chris realised he was still watching the phone and the blur of crimson tugging at the corner of his eye was actually a gigantic killer truck bearing right down on him where he’d drifted onto the centre line. He cursed and dragged the RV back on track.

“What?” C’s voice shot from enthusiastic to wary, and Chris could just imagine him gripping his phone, suddenly focussed.

“Nothin’ C. I’m good, just got a little distracted. I swear to god, talking to you seems to summon traffic out of nowhere.”  
  
Actually westbound it was still pretty sparse, but there was a fairly regular stream of vehicles coming the other way, and the close call had still shaken him a little.  
“You ok?”

“Yeah. I should probably hang up though. I’ll call you when I park up or something?”

“Anytime, Chris, anytime. Drive safe, ok?”

Chris listened to the silence for a while, before reaching across to switch the radio on, and to disconnect his phone and toss in onto the bed in the back of the RV. Unfortunately the urge to call Justin hadn’t left with the girls and their athletic sexcapades, it just meant that there was no one to hide his cell and to remind him that he’d been the one to dump Justin, and that he was officially being Happy For Him and his bitchy bottle blonds.

Calling Lance was out for obvious reasons, and Joey was still refusing to take sides. In Chris’ private opinion that was tantamount to taking theirs, but so long as he remembered not to call Joe to often, or after he’d been drinking, he could fake OK well enough to keep Joey from worrying about him. Twice in one day was probably too often.

It was way too late to call him mom or any of his sisters, there was no way he was calling the girls, and it seemed like most of the guys had tickets to some game, so he was going to have to settle for arguing with the late night radio DJ and playing take-over-tag with the tour bus and trailer that had shown up ahead of him around midnight.

*****

He’d overtaken, and been overtaken in return, five times in about two hours, exchanging the universal hand signals for ‘yeah right’ the first couple of times, and grins and waves the last few. The driver was heavy and tattooed with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, The bus windows were blacked out, and the gear trailer they were hauling was plastered with so many band and slogan stickers that, past the fact they were some flavour of metal or punk, Chris couldn’t figure out who they were. Three days – or was that nights - into a long and lonely drive, and that brief connection was enough to persuade him to flick his indicator when they did and follow them off the highway into a truck stop.

They parked up next to a 16-wheeler rig a way away from the bright lights spilling out of the truck stop diner. Chris followed suit, manoeuvring the cumbersome RV in a wide sweep to end up one bay over. Switching the engine off flooded the cab with silence and stillness, and Chris rolled his shoulders, cracking his neck. If nothing else, this wasn’t a bad spot to stop for the night, although Chris was hoping for at least a bit of company first.

He popped the door, and the night-muted voices of whoever was getting out of the tour bus floated across to him. By the time he’d dragged an over-shirt out of the back - it had been several degrees warmer six hours and however many miles ago – the voices were fading, and his quarry turned out to be three silhouettes heading towards the diner. Chris followed suit, juggling the RV keys with his wallet in one hand.

He’d closed the gap enough that, by the time they got to the swing doors, he could overhear them : low laughing voices with a familiar edge of exhaustion-based hysteria. Combined with the blast of coffee and cleaning spray released by the open door, Chris flashed on memories of hundreds of nights all over the world, stumbling out of vans and busses and into truck stops and diners, post-show buzzy and tripping over his guys. At least one of them even had a Tennessee twang, and the twist in Chris’ stomach felt like cramp.

“… fucking racoon, I’m telling you!” the driver was saying as he held the door open from inside, turning just enough to register Chris. “And you’re the RV guy, right?” he finished without pause.

“That’s me, bus-guy. I’m Alan – hi.” The misleading name came naturally, and Chris offered his hand, which was gripped in a quick thumb-lock.

“Dave. You’re driving late tonight, dude.”

Chris shrugged, and they ambled after the other two, who had staked out a large corner booth in the otherwise empty diner.

“Likewise – you guys got another show tomorrow?”

“Busted, huh.” Dave smiled, “Yeah. Well, these guys do – I’m just driving. You want to join us for …” He gestured to the booth and Chris was quick to accept.

“That would be great – I’ve been driving solo for three days and I’m starting to get cabin fever, you know?”

“I don’t know – not having a bus full of performing monkeys sounds kinda peaceful to me, man.” The affection was obvious in the big guy’s tone even as he fended off a balled up napkin tossed by the furthest of the two band members. “Will, Randy – this is Alan – you think you can dig out the company manners if he joins us for a spell?”

The slightly shorter guy, half hidden inside an oversized white hoodie, gave them both the finger, softened with a smile, while the other – short hair under a baseball cap, strong face – smacked him in the shoulder before giving Chris an abbreviated wave.

“Hey – I’m Randy – ignore the miserable bastard over here. He’s just pissed that we weren’t stopping back in town tonight.”

“You’d be fucking pissed too, if you’d had to give up an offer like that in favour of crashing in the bus with the snore brothers.”

“Yeah, yeah – how do you know it wouldn’t have turned out like that chick back in Jersey?”  
  
‘Back in Jersey,” Dave chorused with Randy.

Will put down the ketchup packet he’d been fiddling with to give both of them the finger simultaneously.

“Now, that sounds like a story.” Chris smiled. .

Will theatrically thumped his head against the melamine table top, and Randy’s smile widened. “Oh yeah …”

****

Something about Randy just caught Chris’ attention. All four of them chatted about stuff and nonsense right through sandwiches and soup and regular refills of de-caff, the three of them keeping the talk flowing without Chris having to work too hard on not giving himself away. He was, in point of fact, having a pretty good night, and unless someone recognised him – which seemed pretty unlikely from all that had been discussed thus far – Chris figured he could happily sit here and talk crap ‘till the sun came up.

All four of them were talking, but Randy was the one Chris realised he was watching hard, registering the way his eyes creased when he chuckled, the broad, long fingered hands with short chipped black-painted nails that covered his face when Dave finally managed to embarrass him. Chris forced himself to blink and focus back on Will, who was involved in some long anecdote about the band’s old van and a tailgate party with an acetylene torch until he was interrupted by a jaw-cracking yawn.

“Dude.” Randy raised his cup in a toast.

Will scrubbed his hands over his face and pushed his long dark hair back off his face again, before shaking his head.

“Nope. Sorry guys. I’m done. I’m gonna go crash.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“OK” Randy nodded. “I’m going to stay a spell - I’m still pretty wired. – Dave?”

Dave gave him a look that Chris couldn’t read, and then shrugged. “I could sleep. Just don’t wake us all up when you crawl back, ok?”

“Sure.” Randy nodded easily, “Just don’t be leaving me to pay your tab, either.”

Chris stood to let Dave out of the booth, and after some fumbling with wallets resulted in a small stack of bills on the table, the two guys headed out, and Chris and Randy slid back into place, facing each other over the cluttered table.

“You get a real kick out of performing, don’t you?” Chris asked to get the conversation rolling again.

“Oh hell yeah!” Randy agreed. “Best damn feeling in the world.”

Chris figured that confessing to working his way through college at Universal would be safe enough. Same for the long-time day-dream of being up on stage performing ‘your own stuff – music that you wrote, you made, that really fucking matters, you know?’

Neither of those things were lies, and if Randy had been cute kicking back with his buddies there was something extra about him when he was enthusing about his passion, hands waving. He’d ditched the cap, and Chris was becoming uncomfortably aware that not only was he interesting and really into his music, he was also a damn good looking guy. Unshaven and visibly tired, but undeniably hot. Chris took another mouthful of lukewarm coffee and encouraged Randy to elaborate about how the band’s sound had evolved. He only recognised about half the bands Randy was mentioning, but he’d reacted appropriately to a couple of unsigned names and that seemed to have gotten him a free pass for the occasional blank look.

*****

They’d paid up and said their goodbyes, so when Chris opened the stall door the very last thing he was expecting to see was his new pal Randy stripping his top off by the row of bathroom basins. Long lean muscles and a dusting of dark hair was revealed as the t-shirts came over Randy’s head. Black ink tattoos on his upper arms; one drawing Chris’ eyes to the secret skin inside the upper arm, while the rest highlighted broad shoulders. Chris swallowed hard.

Their eyes met in the mirror, and for a scary moment Chris wondered if he was about to get his ass kicked.

“Hey,” Randy said, just a heartbeat after it might have sounded natural. “I’m just – I’ve got to clean up, you know? No showers on the bus, and wet-wipes can only do so much …”

“Sure, whatever. Makes sense.” Chris resumed his path back to the sinks, and kept his eyes carefully on his hands as he washed up with pink liquid soap and water hot enough to redden the skin.

At the sink two to the side of him Randy was rummaging around inside a backpack, and splashing water, and it proved impossible not to look. Glimpses of skin out of the corner of his eye, pale and dark blurring under harsh lights, reflected in the mirrors. Trying not to turn his head was a physical effort that made Chris’ neck twinge.

“Can I ask you something?” Randy’s voice made Chris startle, and the next words were tinged with a teasing chuckle. “Are you really that straight, or just really that scared of getting caught?”

Chris’ fingers tightened on the cold porcelain of the sink rim, but he looked up in the mirror, where Randy’s reflection waited for him. Chris had a nasty feeling that his expression probably read as terrified.

Randy smiled, a slow predator’s smile and not for the first time that night, Chris thought of Justin. Chris closed his eyes and tried to break out just one long slow breath to get the tension in his chest to ease. “Cause it’s ok, dude. No one in this whole damn place but us, and I sure as shit aren’t going to tell anyone, so ….” There was the soft sound of high-tops on tile, and then big hands spanning Chris’ hips, thumbs nudging up under Chris’ shirt to brand the skin.

This was the moment when he should push away, shove the taller guy away, act outraged and furious and crash out into the diner, still spitting fury and insult. Chris was distantly aware of that.

What he actually did was bite his lower lip and allow his hips to rock back slightly into the touch, which brushed the fabric of his jeans – his ass - against Randy’s sweats. When that made both of them inhale sharply Chris felt slightly less panicked, meeting Randy’s eyes in the mirror without looking away as he rocked again. The fingers on his hipbones tightened, and there was a faint flush spreading over Randy’s bare chest. This image – this scenario – was going to feature in Chris’ fantasies for quite some time. Getting fucked in a rest room in a truck stop outside Bismark, by this handsome semi-stranger … Jesus.

Chris swallowed hard and forced himself to think realistically.

“Stop.” He forced out, twisting round under Randy’s grip, glaring obviously at the restroom door. With his hand flat between Randy’s nipples Chris pushed him back slightly. “Cubical.”  
  
Randy pushed back, leaning down to take a brief, forceful kiss before stepping back, tumbling them both towards the empty disabled stall. They landed with Chris’ back against the flimsy door, Randy hot and hard and just incredibly _hot_ pushed up against him, kissing and biting and pulling at Chris’ shirt. Chris caught Randy’s hands in his, sucking one and then two of those painted fingers into his mouth, making promises with his tongue that he could only pray he’d get to fulfil. Somehow he managed to fumble behind himself at the same time, and the lock sliding home seemed unnaturally loud, a brief mechanical punctuation in the rest of their organic slick lewd sounds.

Brooking no argument Chris managed to combine sliding to his knees with forcing Randy back against the far wall of the stall, where his hands curled by instinct around the hand rail, holding his hips away from the wall. There was no obstruction to Chris pulling the loose sweats out of the way, and pressing his face along one muscled thigh, revelling in the sweet musky sweat scent.

He breathed in deeply, a moment’s pause before giving in to the demons in his blood and devouring Randy with hands and mouth, whole body rocking to swallow the long narrow length. He tongued him, sucked him, stroked his balls, curved one hand around narrow buttocks, encouraging Randy to thrust. He moaned and swallowed and scratched lightly up the sway of Randy’s back. Ran both hands up Randy’s torso, pushing against the sensation of hair on palms, and teased sensitive nipples with both touches and twists, pinches and petting, until Randy was curled over, fingers bone white on the plastic rail, and Randy’s cock was beginning to pulse in Chris’ mouth, almost in time with the short harsh breaths Randy was snatching.

Chris pulled back and then swallowed deep with a practised twist of the head, and he had his eyes wide open, looking up the length of Randy’s unfamiliar body as he swallowed Randy’s salt-sour come, and all the reasons why this wasn’t making love were singing in Chris’ mind, and the sensation was something like triumph.

When Randy managed to peel his hands away from the wall it was to catch roughly at Chris’ head, holding him still, while Randy gasped ‘Stop! Stop! Fuck!’, his oversensitive dick sliding loosely between Chris’ lips. Chris knelt back on his heels, wiping the back of his hand across his smile. His cock was throbbing in the increasingly tight confines of his jeans, and Chris pressed one hand against the heat, savouring the pressure.

“Jesus fuck.” Randy cursed softly. “Holy fucking fuck.” He slithered bonelessly to join Chris on the mica-sparkled floor of the stall, a sated smile on his face. “I think you broke me.”

Chris grinned at the compliment, working his hand in a gentle roll across his groin.

Randy’s kisses along Chris’ forearm were soft, almost sloppy, but still hot as hell, and when Randy’s hands fumbled with Chris’ and he mumbled ‘let me?’ around more of them, Chris adjusted himself, unbuttoning his fly. He was far enough gone that the movement was slick and easy from the first, and just watching someone _elses_ broad hand, wrapped around his cock made arousal twist low in his belly, so it wasn’t long until he was biting his own hand to keep quiet as he came.

The paper towels in the dispenser were thick and scratchy against his tingling skin, and navigating around each other within the confines of the stall was suddenly silently awkward

Chris cleared his throat. “I’m, um. I’ll just - I’ll head out first.”

“Sure thing, man.” Chris didn’t think it was his imagination that Randy seemed relieved. “Just – could you kick my bag over?”

Chris grabbed the open backpack from beneath the row of sinks, and stretched the walk back out to four whole steps.

“Thanks.”

“My pleasure.” Chris replied. “Literally.” He paused, and then, figuring, what the hell, pulled Randy’s uncertain body into a quick hug that slid back into a thumb-lock handshake. “I’ll look out for that next album.”

*****

When Chris woke up, late on a brisk fall morning, the band’s tour bus was long gone. It wasn’t until he was coming back to the RV after a gentle breakfast and two thirds of the crossword in the local paper, that Chris noticed the flyer tucked under the windshield wiper.

He had to stretch to reach it, but once he’d slid it close enough to get a good grip and tug it down, he was left with a smile. He recognised the logo from the tattoo on Randy’s shoulder, although he’d been too caught up in the moment to actually read the words then. He flipped the glossy card over and saw a list of dates, including one in Portland two days before he was due to meet the girls there.

He hopped up into the drivers seat, tapping the flyer on the steering wheel for a moment, before tucking it in with the parking stubs and toll tickets in the sun visor and reaching for the ignition.

Lamb of God. Might be worth checking them out, Chris reckoned.

 

*****

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't song fic, but searching for a title, I found this, and it just had to be done.
> 
> What I’ve Become – Lamb of God.
> 
> Blank stares from broken men  
>  So withered from the poisons they can't remember when  
>  There were once honest reasons.  
>  It's all the lie, it died a hundred thousand miles ago.  
>  Pretending I'm still here  
>  Justifiy what I've become, sanctify what I've become  
>  Amazing disgrace.. (how) sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.  
>  Better lost if this is found, best blinded never to see.  
>  The race to save face, nothing now is what we meant it to be.  
>  Pretending I'm still here.  
>  It's a system now, intertwined.  
>  Take your place in the line to be ground by the gears of the masterpiece.  
>  Betrayal.  
>  Justifiy what I've become, sanctify what I've become  
>  Suffered consequence  
>  It's been so long any piece of this made any kind of sense.  
>  You anoint the kind, I'll burn everything down to ashes.  
>  You giveth, I taketh away.  
>  You giveth, I taketh away.  
>  It's a system now, intertwined.  
>  Take your place in the line to be ground by the gears of the masterpiece.


End file.
